Latest Thinking ArticlesHudson Australia's blog covering the best in Recruitment, Talent Management and Recruitment Process Outsourcinghttp://au.hudson.com/latest-thinking/latest-thinking-blogWant to be a CFO? Read this...http://au.hudson.com/latest-thinking/latest-thinking-blog/postid/33/want-to-be-a-cfo-read-thisAccounting and FinanceWed, 16 Jul 2014 07:22:45 GMTIf you're a finance professional and you&rsquo;re thinking about becoming a CFO one day, you may need to change your behaviour.<br />
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If your analysis of a market trend, opportunity or risk to the business gets ignored, well then you have two options. You can go to lunch, thinking it's enough to have filed a report. Or you can seek out whoever will listen and make sure your point is heard.<br />
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This "drive to action" is what will distinguish accountants in the coming years, says <a href="http://au.hudson.com/contact-details/ArticleID/1647/Nicholas-Rogers" target="_blank">Nicholas Rogers</a>, Manager of Accounting and Finance in Brisbane for Hudson, who has recruited accounting and finance professionals for the past eight years. He says the fast-changing business environment is calling for forward-looking finance professionals who take ownership of the business's future and demand to be heard.<br />
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"Future CFOs need to step up, push their point, make sure they are heard and that their analysis is taken into consideration," Rogers says. <br />
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"That&rsquo;s not an easy thing to do when you have a non-finance person leading the organisation, but the good ones will be very persuasive. If you can communicate in such a way where you just can't argue with the logic, well, you just can't argue with logic."<br />
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The stereotype of the office-bound "bean-counter" is out of touch with reality, Rogers adds. Chartered accountants, for example, are no longer just the people you call when you need some numbers. The good ones know they have to go out and sell their expertise and convince companies they are needed from a consulting perspective. <br />
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"That's something they struggled with in transition," Rogers says. "They are technically strong people but if you are going out and pitching for work and selling expertise you have to have the communication, sales ability and commerciality to explain what impact those skills can have."<br />
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Essentially, accountants need to be more accountable &ndash; both to the business and to themselves. Finance professionals need to recognise they have a responsibility to add value to a business and help it evolve, not just report on things, Rogers says. "It's too easy just to say this is what the numbers tell me, take it or leave it. It requires a certain amount of leadership to step up and say I've uncovered something here, you need to listen to me, and be persuasive in getting that point across so the analysis isn't just a waste of time."<br />
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It's a more entrepreneurial approach and inherently involves more risk. The need to be agile in a fast-changing business landscape means analysis of new market trends and opportunities will involve ambiguous and incomplete data. Fear of failure will prevent some from stepping forward.<br />
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But <a href="http://au.hudson.com/accounting-recruitment-finance-recruitment" target="_blank">finance professionals</a> with their analytical skills and, increasingly, familiarity with a company's IT system, are the best placed to make educated business calls. That could be scanning the market for opportunities and threats, or calculating the impact of a new government policy or tax. They don't have to lead the proposals, but to stimulate discussion at board level and get others interested.<br />
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"You have to be engaging enough to ensure someone else sees your passion and takes the lead," Rogers says. "As to who takes the lead, that&rsquo;s a question of leadership styles. What&rsquo;s key is that you can engage people to head onto the same bus with you, in the same direction. Someone else may drive, but you have to be there to navigate."</p>
<h3><strong>You might be interested in: </strong></h3>
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<p><a target="_self" href="http://au.hudson.com/latest-thinking-blog/PostId/45/salary-guide-how-much-are-you-worth"><img longdesc="Salary guide" alt="Salary guide" src="/Portals/AU/images/blog/rsz_employees_salaries-200x200.jpg" /></a>&nbsp; <a target="_self" href="http://au.hudson.com/latest-thinking-blog/PostId/45/salary-guide-how-much-are-you-worth">Salary guide: how much are you worth? </a></p>
<p><a target="_self" href="http://au.hudson.com/search-for-jobs"><img longdesc="Job search" alt="Job search" src="/Portals/AU/images/blog/rsz_job-search200x200-5.jpg" /></a>&nbsp; <a target="_self" href="http://au.hudson.com/search-for-jobs">Search&nbsp; for jobs</a></p>33Why workplace diversity is so much more than genderhttp://au.hudson.com/latest-thinking/latest-thinking-blog/postid/28/why-workplace-diversity-is-so-much-more-than-genderAccounting and FinanceWed, 11 Jun 2014 16:14:26 GMT<p>When you hear the phrase &ldquo;workplace diversity&rdquo; you might assume it&rsquo;s all about gender. </p>
<p>But diversity also spans age, ethnicity, perspectives and experience. And it matters because, not just in accounting but across all professions, a diverse workforce delivers better business results. </p>
<h3><strong>Not all diversity is the same</strong></h3>
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A study&nbsp; from the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that teams with a variety of experience are better at solving problems. They identified three types of diversity: <br />
<ul>
<li>Demographic diversity - gender, age, ethnicity</li>
<li>Informational diversity - a person's education and experience</li>
<li>Value-goal diversity - how a person defines a particular project goal</li>
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The study, which looked at how the different diversity types impacted group performance, found that informational diversity helped groups debate and constructively solve problems together.<br />
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<p>It makes sense, really: people with different past experiences will come to a problem with different ideas, ultimately giving more options for the best eventual solution. </p>
<h3><strong>The case for international workplace diversity</strong></h3>
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One of the clearest examples of the value of informational diversity in accounting teams is around the (often controversial) local versus international hiring issue. <br />
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Some employers I work with are very focused on locally gained skills &ndash; they place a huge value on local Australian experience. Yet widening the net to include international experience can bring huge value to an organisation.<br />
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Having lived and worked around the world in a number of countries, I&rsquo;ve seen how businesses on different continents can be extremely different from each other. But I&rsquo;ve also seen how similar the challenges they face can be. <br />
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<p>By not including a range of experiences in an organisation, I would argue that purely locally-focused businesses are missing out on great potential talent and &ndash; in an increasingly globalised world &ndash; will continue to miss out. </p>
<h3><strong>The future accountant will need broader skills</strong></h3>
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When it comes to accounting recruitment, there are two specific examples why considering workplace diversity could deliver employers better results. <br />
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<strong>1. Commercial acumen.</strong> I believe employers must look beyond what they think they want today because the accountant of the future will need to be extremely commercially savvy. The type of accountant employers would do well to hire now therefore are those who are commercially aware to start with, who are interested in the broader business and business outcomes. <br />
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<p><strong>2. Communication skills.</strong> Seeing things from a different perspective is part of what a great accountant does &ndash; but so too is to the way he relates to people. Accounting is very much about people, because you can have the very best data in the world, but without the ability to be persuasive and influential, and to communicate that data, then your analysis is futile. </p>
<h3><strong>True diversity in hiring: questions to consider</strong></h3>
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When I was in the UK some of my clients would hire from any discipline. There might be two people in a room: one who studied accounting, the other who studied engineering. But it&rsquo;s the one with the better attitude and aptitude who would often win the job &ndash; not the one with the right degree. <br />
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In fact, there are some who would argue that the non-accounting graduate interested in a career in accounting is the more desirable candidate, purely because they already have a diversity of knowledge and experience not found in the accounting pool.<br />
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At Hudson, our approach is to assess a candidate across all factors. Experience and education, yes, but also motivational drivers, aptitude and career fit to build a complete picture of a great hire. We believe that that&rsquo;s where clients get the most value: for both the hire itself and for future organisational performance. <br />
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<p>What do you think? As an industry can we open our eyes to people with more diverse backgrounds than previously? And are there talented individuals who have the right aptitude &ndash; but may not be accounting graduates? </p>
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<td style="vertical-align: text-top;"><strong>Nicholas Rogers</strong> is an Accounting &amp; Finance Manager at Hudson Brisbane. Nicholas has a proven track record of successfully recruiting qualified accountants up to and including board level appointments across Brisbane and Regional Queensland for both owner managed and ASX listed businesses.
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<div style="margin-top: 20px;"></div>28Communication skills: the key to accounting successhttp://au.hudson.com/latest-thinking/latest-thinking-blog/postid/30/communication-skills-the-key-to-accounting-successAccounting and FinanceWed, 28 May 2014 12:44:07 GMTIf you think <a target="_blank" href="http://au.hudson.com/accounting-recruitment-finance-recruitment">accounting</a> is all about the numbers, you're only half right. Detailed, technical proficiency will always be a key part of the role, but those who develop strong commercial and communication skills will increase their chances of success.<br />
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Increasingly, finance professionals who use their analytical skills to tell a compelling story with numbers and influence business outcomes will be those who stand out from the pack, says <a target="_blank" href="http://au.hudson.com/contact-details/ArticleID/1647/Nicholas-Rogers">Nicholas Rogers</a>, Manager of Accounting and Finance in Brisbane for Hudson, who has been in accounting recruitment for the past eight years.<br />
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In fact, one of the best things ambitious finance professionals can do to develop the skills most needed to advance their careers is attend networking functions and talk to people who aren't accountants, Rogers says.<br />
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"As an accountant you often go to these industry-supported events. It's all very technical and you are in a room with 20 or 30 other accountants, but it&rsquo;s not accountants you need to be mixing with," Rogers says. "It's engineers, salespeople, people you will be doing business with and not just those people you're going to be working alongside."<br />
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These kinds of interactions are great for building both effective communication skills and commercial acumen, he argues. They can help pave the way for much more varied and diverse roles, as a trained accountant might find herself embedded within a sales team, for example, and not just looking at cost versus pricing.<br />
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"They could be recognising a particular geographic segment or product line may be performing better than another, and linking that back to sales activity rather than a financial metric," Rogers says. "Then they would use that as a case point to drive sales activity in another similar area."<br />
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Rogers himself has had a diverse career, beginning in one of the 'Big Four' accounting firms before working with a number of Fortune 500 companies overseas. So he recognises the beginnings of a broader skill set when he is recruiting. And he says what he is really looking for are people with a strong "drive to action".<br />
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"I regularly interview people now, and I will ask for an example of a particular achievement or something they uncovered in analysis, and follow up with 'How did that change the business?'," Rogers says. "Often they will say 'I reported that to my boss, I presented a board report or I sent off a recommendation.'<br />
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"There's no follow up there, there's no drive to action. The ones that actually show initiative and navigate their way through the organisation and through the non-financial people potentially making these decisions, those are the ones that end up truly adding value to the business."<br />
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Would you like to know more about hiring accountants with great communication skills?</strong>
<div style="padding: 0px; margin: 5px 5px 30px 0px; display: block; text-align: justify;"><a href="/fill-your-vacancy" class="LinkButton" onclick="_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Blog', 'Click', 'Blog Post - Contact Us Button']);"><span class="LinkButton_PineGreen">Contact Accounting &amp; Finance Recruitment</span></a></div>30